- •Contents
- •Preface
- •Part I. Print media Unit 1 mass media: general notion
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •It’s wrong to portray fathers as domestic incompetents – but women still
- •Unit 2 newspaper headlines and their linguistic peculiarities
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •Unit 3 lexical features of newspaper articles
- •Names of some organisations, establishments, parties
- •Abbreviations
- •Acronyms
- •Neologisms
- •Colloquial words
- •Shortened words
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •Former Mandela Fund Official Says Model Gave Him Diamonds
- •The International Herald Tribune, August 6, 2010
- •A. Too many clichés, at the end of the day
- •B. Social class affects white pupils’ exam results more than those of ethnic minorities – study
- •C. Blair’s job was done by 1997: to numb Labour, and to enshrine Thatcherism
- •In Downing Street, Blair never fulfilled his early promise and let Brown in.
- •Question time in Oldham Data profiling is helping Oldham police analyse the work of its community support officers
- •Airport and station get walk-in nhs centres
- •People's peers take back seat in the Lords
- •Not off to uni? What an excellent idea...
- •VIII Welsh Assembly launches £44m learning grants
- •4. Three men jailed for rape in Oxford after victim sees film on mobile.
- •Unit 4 grammatical and syntactical properties of newspaper articles
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •Cronyism alert on plan for more people’s peers
- •Revealed: Queen’s dismay at Blair legacy
- •Victim / radiation / in £50m drugs / cancer / is denied
- •Unit 5 feature articles: essence, structure, lexical means, stylictic properties
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks Task 1. Read Article a and comment on its genre. What sphere of public life does it reflect? a. After 40 years, the terrorists turn to politics
- •In the East Belfast Mission hall, the uvf, uda and Red Hand Commando announced they had put weapons “beyond use”
- •С. A slice of Middle England Ruaridh Nicoll journeys in search of the perfect pork pie and finds himself seduced by the olde worlde charms of... Leicestershire
- •D. Gordon Brown: There is life after No 10
- •In his first major interview since losing the election, the former Prime Minister tells Christina Patterson why he’s thriving as a constituency mp – and happily living without the trappings of power
- •Unit 6 analytical genres of print media: editorial, op-ed, column, lte
- •I. Editorial
- •III. Сolumn
- •IV. Letters to the editor
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •How Not to Fight Colds
- •The New York Times, October 4, 2010
- •Clean and Open American Elections
- •It’s our class, not our colour, that screws us up
- •Task 12. Read the two ltEs below. What motive was behind writing those letters?
- •I. Giving an Edge to Children of Alumni
- •The New York Times, October 4, 2010
- •II. Childhood misery
- •Task 13. Read the two letters again, and observe the difference between them. What arguments does the author of first letter put forward to drive his message across?
- •Unit 7 print media: revision
- •Task 3. Read the article below and define its genre. What are the constituent parts of the text? House prices: Heading south
- •I was a terrible teenage drinker – I couldn't get hold of alcohol How do young people drink so much today? And how do they get served, asks Michael Deacon
- •Task 7. Read the article below and say what genre it is. Translate the italicised words and word combinations, analyse them. Twitter: Bad sports
- •Test 1. Print media
- •Variants 1-16.
- •Part II. Broadcast media Unit 8 learning to understand broadcast media texts
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •Unit 9 learning to differentiate broadcast media news and analytical genres
- •The press conference and the statement are an integral part of the live reporting and are not accompanied by the news presenter’s comments.
- •Fragments of the press-conference, the statement, as well as the parliamentary debate could be quoted in the video brief news, the report and the commentary that are part of the news bulletin.
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •Audio Track 6
- •Audio Track 7
- •Bonfire of the quangos? It’s more like a barbecue: Despite all the fanfare, just 29 will be completely abolished
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •A shot in the arm – поиск наркотика; стимул (перен.) a soft touch – обходительный человек; pie in the sky – журавль в небе, пустые посулы
- •He wants the Scottish government to give a shot in the arm to the tourist industry (Sky News)
- •A flop – unsuccessful film or play gazumping – cheating a potential buyer of a house
- •Nifty – very good or attractive (nifty fifties – «золотой возраст»)
- •Some examples of former slang words to booze – to drink alcohol
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •Unit 12 stylistic and syntactical peculiarities of broadcast media discourse
- •Control Questions
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •Hungarians battle to hold back toxic sludge spill from Danube
- •Vessel mishap
- •Test 2. Lexical and syntactical propertires of broadcast media discourse
- •Variants 1-16.
- •In class:
- •In class:
- •Unit 13 grammatical properties of broadcast media discourse
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •Uk’s official economic growth estimates revised down
- •Austerity won’t trigger double-dip recession, economists say
- •Ireland’s economic outlook worsens
- •Ireland’s economic outlook worsened on Monday as the country’s central bank
- •Unit 14 learning to work with broadcast media texts
- •Sun turns its back on Labour after 12 years of support
- •General election 2010: did it really happen?
- •The coalition government: Sweetening the pill
- •Test 3. Morphological properties of broadcast media discourse
- •Variants 1-16.
- •In class:
- •Unit 15 regional accents of british broadcast media (scottish, welsh, irish)
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •Unit 16 broadcast media: revision
- •Murder rate at lowest for 20 years
- •Rogue Trader at Société Générale Gets Jail Term
- •The Guardian, October 5, 2010 Task 9. Find special terms in the second half of the material (they are not marked). Read the piece again, find clichés and idioms in it.
- •Task 38. Read the article below and say what crime is reflected in it. What are its underlying reasons?
- •Sham marriages on “unprecedented scale”
- •Final test on mass media discourse
- •Variants 1-16.
- •In class:
- •In class:
- •References
- •Учимся понимать и интерпретировать медийные тексты на английском языке
Control Questions
What factor determines syntactical features of broadcast media discourse?
What are the standardising and expressive syntactical features of broadcast media texts?
Name all expressive syntactical features of broadcast media discourse.
4. How are subordinate clauses linked in the complex sentence in broadcast media texts? How many clauses can be found in such sentences?
5. What syntactical complexes can be found in broadcast media discourse?
Practical Tasks
Task 1. Watch Video 30 for several seconds until you see screen graphics. Still the frame and try to explain the expression Big Freeze.
Task 2. Before resuming your work with Video 30, study the words and expressions in the box below, watch the video to grasp its essence.
cusp: on the cusp of several counties
to brace oneself for another storm
to be thin on the ground: customers are thin on the ground
to sell out haulage
shovel antic
blanket kindling
the staples pond
to maroon snug
pelvis to fracture
to slip on (sth) featureless
stables barracks
panic buying to stock up
Task 3. Watch Video 30 again, try to catch the following proper names:
- village name;
- names of the three counties mentioned in the clip;
- another name for the county where the report was filmed.
Task 4. Can you find a Russian equivalent of the village name? In the video find another village name close semantically and structurally to the one you have just deciphered, think of its origin.
Task 5. Close the gaps in the following sentences to see the contextual use of the idioms and phrasal verbs in the report you have just watched.
1. [Village name …1…], on the cusp of the counties of …2-4…, …5… itself for what might be to come.
2. … and customers at the local shops …1… …2… …3… .
3. “I’m afraid, we are completely …1… …2…”
4. At the stables more than 40 horses are confined to barracks, …1… …2… snuggly against the biting cold.
5. “Unfortunately, I was …1… a horse …2… of stable yesterday. And it just literary …3… …4… a bit of ice and …5… …6… fracturing its pelvis.”
Task 6. Say what sentences in the report are heavily loaded with phrasal verbs? Why is it the point?
Task 7. Close the gaps in the sentences below and say what stylistic means are used in them. Are the sentences simple, complex or compound?
1. …1… the village is …2… with snow.
2. At the Equastrian Centre the shelves have been cleared of …1… and …2… that might keep animals warm.
3. The local school is under a …1… of white and …2… decisions will need to be made about …3… to allow pupils to come to lessons on Monday.
4. Most people have already …1-2… for the next …3… of the snow and ice …4…
5. …1… antic sledges are proving popular, it’s the staples that are disappearing fast.
6. …1… the temperatures firmly below zero, and the snow …2… …3… yet again, most of the villagers here in …4… are doing what sensible people would do under these conditions – they are …5… …6… .
7. wrapped up …1… against the …2… cold.
8. …1… for now the “…2-3… ” is no longer …4… Instead, it’s a …5-6…
Task 8. What is the general mood of Video 30? What means (verbal and visual) are employed by the journalist to create such mood?
Task 9. Dissect the report into major information points.
Give your opinion on the issue raised in the material.
Task 10. Read the newspaper article fragment thoroughly. Study the terminology used in it, get ready to work with Audio Track 11 and Video 31 as they focus on the same issue as the article does.